Rating: ★½

The Demon was the seventh film for South African director Percival Rubens (1929-2009). Rubens turned out a small output of mostly action films and thrillers throughout his career between the 1960s and 1990. These include other genre efforts such as the South African superhero film Mighty Man (1978), the post-apocalyptic action film Survival Run (1983) and the psycho roommate film Sweet Murder (1990).

The Demon came out with a 1979 release date according to most internet sources. This would appear to be its South African release date, although I can find nothing that corroborates that. The film seen here does have a 1981 copyright date, although this is supposedly the version that was re-edited for US release and apparently comes with extra nudity. I do question these dates. Given that these extra nudity scenes feature the imported American actors and include the film’s climax, it seems more plausible to believe these were all shot at once rather than the American actors brought back to South Africa to shoot extra material and an entire different climax just for US release. Moreover, given the film’s heavy debt of inspiration by Halloween (1978), it makes more sense that the film came out at the height of the Slasher Film fad rather than in 1979, which would make it the very first of the Halloween copies. (In fact, Halloween didn’t start to get released internationally until well into 1979). This is all speculation and I am perfectly happy to be wrong about this.

As said, The Demon gives clear indication it was made as a copy of the huge success of Halloween. It creates another figure all in black and a mask who wanders around the town, hiding in the shadows and then emerging to kill girls. Like Michael Myers, the killer here is a blank character behind their mask about which we know nothing. In this case, we know literally nothing about them – we don’t even get the cursory benefit of a name or the opening scenes that Halloween gave us where Michael Myers kills his sister or where we learn that the killer has escaped from an asylum.

One of the more unusual aspects is the winding in of American actor Cameron Mitchell as a clairvoyant brought in by the parents of one of the missing girls. This places The Demon in the same arena as a spate of films, principally tv movies, around this era that were clairvoyant murder mysteries about psychics picking up clues to solve murders with the likes of Baffled (1972), The Eyes of Charles Sand (1972), Visions (1972) and the theatrically released Eyes of Laura Mars (1978). On the other hand, Mitchell does seem a bit deranged – he goes into a frenzy and starts tearing apart the missing daughter’s room and keeps warning the husband not to get personally involved – and never actually does anything to get them closer to the killer.

Directorially, The Demon is dull. Nothing that goes on in the plot has any particular urgency and Percival Rubens spends too much time dealing with the private lives of teacher Jennifer Holmes and her sister Zoli Markey. The one unexpected surprise the film has is [PLOT SPOILERS] when the wife (Moira Winslow) pulls a gun and shoots Cameron Mitchell – the abrupt and unexpected elimination of the film’s one recognisable star name is quite a jolt, not to mention that the whole subplot regarding Mitchell investigating the murders has been built up, leading you to expect he and his clairvoyance is going to be of some significance to proceedings. It does however remove the only interesting character from the film.

Trailer here